Trivago’s New Logo Gets a Big Triva-No

The global hotel search engine Trivago revealed a brand new logo back in February, but has only just gained exposure this week. The 1,300 strong Trivago team decided to rebrand there logo in-house and it doesn’t appear to have gone down very well, especially in the design community. However, the new logos purpose it is only used to separate its corporate identity from its products.

To refresh yourself with Trivago’s current logo, here it is. It’s a simple text based logo which does not feature an icon.

Trivago’s corporate identity development

The new trivago logo is referred to as ‘Wabi – the humble circle’, as named by the in-house team. By the photographs taken of the ‘Wabi’ development, you’d think they would be sending a rocket to the moon.

Trivago team deep in development

Trivago’s new logo revealed

Instead, they designed an unfinished circle that looks like it’s been drawn blindfolded. Office party game? Kind of. Trivago turned their corporate identity development into a friendly competition split into six different teams.

And the winner is…

Notable changes to the logo includes an icon and stripped colours from the word-mark, lending them to the icon instead to put more focus on that element of the design. The icon Wabi seems to be very philosophical about the hotel search engine.

One of the designers were asked why the unfinished circle – and here was her answer:

“It really ties in to the core tenet which we communicate internally. That we are “Never wise, never great, never done”. A circle should be closed, but it is not, because we’re never done. We’re never great, which is why the circle is imperfect. It is organic because we are a human company.”

Supporting visuals for Wabi

Although the logo is not being used on the Trivago product itself, the company seem to have taken the new corporate identity seriously. They have designed an entire brand identity which includes alternative logos, media kit pages, powerpoint templates and adverts.

Media Kit Pages

Powerpoint Template

Advertisement variations

The rest of the corporate identity looks quite generic and templated, with the new logo slapped onto the design. The ambitious icon needs better visuals to support it as it currently looks as if it was just thrown together.

Applying the logo to a different background in a single colour is a key requirement for every logo. Versatility of a logo is one of the biggest make or break factors of a strong logo, but the corporate Trivago logo doesn’t seem to work very well. The design looks weak without the colours, but then looking back at the full colour version it doesn’t work very well either.

Another thing that struck me when I seen the new logo was that it looked like a travel company. After some digging around the web, it struck me that Stage Coach’s logo is strikingly similar. It looks as if this is Stage Coach’s rebrand rather than Trivago’s.

Overall thoughts on the rebrand

Overall, I don’t think the rebrand was a success and a lot of other designers have responded negatively to it. With the amount of work that’s gone into the logo behind the scenes, the outcome seems a bit disappointing. Although from the outside it may seem like a failure, the Trivago team seems to have expressed great pride in their new logo Wabi.

Personally, I feel that the company should just get behind the primary Trivago identity that packages the brand as a whole, rather than having two separate identities. Thankfully this ones behind closed doors and does not represent its hotel search engine.